Parent contact

Over the past few days I’ve been contacting a lot of parents with phone calls and email.  I told my students who were in the 50%’s that every one of them should expect a phone call home because they are way too close to passing for them not to pass.  I have given them all a chance to make quiz corrections, and only a few have taken advantage.

The conversations have been very enlightening.  There have been a variety of parent responses: “yes, he’s always been like that,” “is there anything he can do to make up the work?,” “the move’s been really hard on him,” “thanks for letting me know,” “we’ve been having problems at home too.” And the list goes on.

I like it when I get the student answering the phone.  It’s good to hear them on the phone and to communicate with them outside the classroom.  I had a nice conversation with one of my students whose parents had gone to the bar for taco night and he wished for top ramen.  Now I know that food is a big motivator for him and I even took top ramen to school to give as a prize the next time we play a game in that class (vocabulary Bingo was a good one last chapter).  I’d never talked very much with this particular student who is quiet and is not disruptive.  I know that it would be better if I could get contact with students on a human-to-human level instead of just teacher-student level, and it is really hard to make all the calls, but I do find it rewarding.

I called a parent of a transfer student to introduce myself and to establish contact.  The student had a conflict with the previous teacher and instead of working it out, mom and daughter pushed on counselling to transfer to my class.  What a shame.  I shared with the parent that I think there’s so much growth when people learn to work out their conflicts.  Plus, she was getting a B with the previous teacher and she’s done almost no work in my class, but has complained that my pace is too fast and told me how other teachers do this or that.  Today I told the student that she can become a geometry teacher and run her class as she wishes.  I relayed this to mom, who understood the message:  “go back and work it out with the other teacher, or adjust to the new environment and stop the whining.  I’m happy to have you stay but it’s also a good time to go back.”  Mom said that they’d be having the conversation this weekend.  With either decision, I will have a more cooperative student.

Jan 22 Alg 1 4.2b

Reflection

I started class reviewing 4 exit tasks and having students review what went right and what went wrong.  I pointed out with extra emphasis that lines had to be straight and could be good lines of best fit without hitting any of the data points.  We wrote the equations of the lines, and emphasized that there could be several different equations that were right, but they had to be in the ballpark.

I then gave them the problem of the saturated fat vs total fat of different fast food burgers for them to plot, draw a line of best fit, and write an equation of the line.  I told them that it’s not a test, but I wanted a test environment, so I could see what they knew as individuals. Today was a short day, with early release and the assembly, we had 35 minutes.  The kids had 15 minutes to do this task, and many finished early.

The first few minutes were spent walking around to help students get their axes and scales right.  I ended up asking the group, “who knows about nutrition?  Does the amount of saturated fat depend on the amount of total fat or visa versa?” Thankfully, some of the students knew the answer.  But many needed a reminder that the dependent variable goes on the y-axes, and I wrote y and x on the top of the columns for the saturated fat and total fat data.  The test environment gave me a chance to give individual help to lower skilled students.

Usually with tests I tear up the papers of those that talk, but because this was just participation points, I told them that I’d be calling parents of any talkers.  I did end up calling 2 parents.  One didn’t answer, and no voicemail, so I sent an email home.  The other parent and I had a nice conversation, starting with “your son’s not in trouble,” getting the sigh of relief, and then sharing what’s going on.

I know as a parent that if I get a call from school, there is automatic stress.  Somehow, those magic words of “he’s not in trouble” pave the way for bad news in a proactive and preventive way.  We had a good conversation where the dad learned that his son is failing, is a nice kid in class, and has to look through his quizzes and do quiz corrections this weekend.

I’ve contacted the other parent before, with no academic improvement in her son, but his attitude does seem better than it was at the start of the year, so I’m hopeful.  It’s hard when a student misses so much school and it appears to be related to being with one parent or the other.  He’s missed Fridays because his dad was picking him up early, or missed Mondays when his mom was supposed to drop him off.